


The Stars are Dancing

by paradoxCase



Series: Universe in a Klein Bottle [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Pre-Sgrub, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-27
Updated: 2012-06-27
Packaged: 2017-11-08 17:35:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/445736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paradoxCase/pseuds/paradoxCase
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gamzee waits for his lusus to come home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Stars are Dancing

**Author's Note:**

> This is meant as a backstory sidefic for the next chapter of [Message in a Klein Bottle](http://archiveofourown.org/works/374845/chapters/611379), but it's canon compliant all by itself, so it can also be read as its own fic.

Tonight's the night he comes back. You know that because you found that note he all went and left for you on the door of your hive, right where he knew you wouldn't miss it, and you up and marked that date on the calendar you keep just so you don't get to be missing all the important dates people tell you about; wriggling days and holidays, or when Karkat's wanting to come to your hive. But the days when your lusus says he'll be back are marked extra big just so you can be sure you won't be missing them.

It wouldn't be a lie to say you've got your excitement on a bit, and you've set up camp on the beach with all your favorite kinds of faygo and some pies. He doesn't like the pies, but you know he gets a kick when you pretend to forget and save one to offer him anyway. Everyone always gets their kicks when they think you don't really got your observe on, and you know that feel, because everything is so much motherfuckin better when you don't really understand. There's nothing at all to understand tonight - all you got to do is sit on your miracle beach with your miracle picnic and wait for your best motherfucking miracle seabeast to appear on the horizon. The calendar said so, and the calendar ain't never been wrong.

Time passes. You don't got no clock, but you've been watching the stars get their dance on across the sky, which is just that much more miraculous. There's been no spot of white on the horizon, but that doesn't mean a thing. Well, it means you've got to start in on your last pie before he gets here, but that's ok, one pie never made no difference to no one what didn't even really like them anyway.

The tide's changed noticeably and the stars are stepping their final steps when your eyes start to get their droop on, but that's ok too. Sometimes he finds you asleep on the beach and nudges you awake with his giant nose and gets you to your recuperacoon like he thinks you don't know what's good for you, and that's a kind of miracle too, that kind of caring. So you curl up in the sand and wait for him to come like you know he will.

Your dreams are full of lights and colors. The stars all turn to their constellation pictures and dance in pairs across a floor made of waves in time to the glorious honks of the Messiahs, and each honk brings in another bright dancer until all you can see is the colors whirling like radioactive snow. The Messiahs laugh and laugh, and this is how the Carnival ought to be gettin on, but someone should be here, and he's not _here_ \--

You try to leave to go look for this missing motherfucker, whoever the hell he is, he can't be up and missing this miracle, but the door keeps all misplacing itself, jumping around with the honks, and just when you think you got that motherfucker figured out he up and goes somewhere completely different. The lights all start to shift to the same dull red color, and that ain't wonderful or miraculous, just boring boring sameness, and it gets brighter and brighter until it's just a field of indiscriminate _red_. It hurts you with its sameness and brightness and the Messiahs ain't laughing anymore, and whoever it was still isn't here.

You crack your eyes open, and that motherfucker that was making everything so red stares back at you and you shut them again. It's the motherfucking _sun_ , huge and red and roasting you on the sand. It's bright day and he never came back. The miracles are gone, burned to dust in all the red; the Messiahs don't laugh no more, and everything _hurts_.

You crawl back to your hive where it's nice and dark again, and go to your recuperacoon. The slime up and burns your skin, though, so you just eat your reserve pie and lie down on the floor. Even when the miracles are gone, at least you always know there'll always be a floor. You guess floors are even more reliable than your calendar.

You don't remember your dreams this time, but you wake up again to someone yelling and touching your burned skin. He's too small and much too loud to be your lusus, but it doesn't take a guessing game to figure this one out, because there's only one other motherfucker that ever shows up at your hive. 

Karkat up and loses all his steam when you roll over and look up at him, but you can already see he's brought all the miracles back, even after the sun burned them all away. "You didn't say you'd come tonight," you say. It's got to be night again if he's here, but you know you don't got no motherfuckin gray marks on your calendar for tonight. It's always better that way, though, always that much more of a miracle when he's here for his own mysterious reasons and not because of plans you made with him weeks in advance.

His face crinkles up, and he's obviously getting his worry on, but instead he goes back to yelling. "I came because every single time you don't show up online for a long enough period it means you've gone and done something incredibly fucking stupid like this, and _someone_ has to come over and get your ass in gear so you can maybe live like a normal person for as much as an entire week! I keep hoping maybe you'll have a good, normal reason for not being around, like maybe you have actual, real, shit to do, but it's always something like this. You don't even fucking get it, you don't even know what happened or how to fix it because you just spend all your time waiting for your goddamned _miracles_."

"A miracle up and came, bro," you point out, even though you hadn't been expecting him. Maybe if he thinks you were, he'd... no, he wouldn't.

"That's because there's _one_ of us who gets that the only fucking 'miracles' are the ones you put together yourself, dumbass," he says, exasperated, but you can tell he's done getting his yelling on. "Do you have any-- No, of course you wouldn't. Why would you have anything other than a bunch of fucking slime pies? Forget I asked." He grumbles and stomps off into your ablution block.

He finds what he's looking for in the old first aide kit you'd up and forgot was even there, a bottle with some funny-colored cream inside. "You don't even know what this is for, do you?" he grouses, and when you don't contest that he sighs. "It soothes burns, you moron. Do you think you can remember that the next time you decide to go sunbathing?" He cracks open the top. "Here, give me your arm."

You didn't exactly go out to that beach underdressed, so it doesn't take no time at all to get it rubbed in everywhere that red motherfucker went and toasted you. You wish he'd be slower about it, you wish he'd take his time and be more personal, make it less like it's a damn _chore_. You want him to touch you when he doesn't have to, you want to know he helps you because he _cares_ , and not just because he hopes you don't die. He doesn't meet your eyes at all, so maybe he's just got his shy on. Maybe he _does_ care, but he's just got to put up his mask, paint his own face into a loud shouty frown. You're not sure. Maybe _he's_ not sure. What would he do if you tried to show him what was missing here? Shout more, probably. Tell you you ain't got no decency and distance you again, and you still wouldn't know. Even if you did, could you actually get him to up and take his face off for you? Karkat is the miracle to end all miracles, a bottomless well into the depths of the unknowable. You wish he could be _your_ miracle, but you know miracles don't come at the beck and call of no troll, that ain't how motherfuckin miracles _work_.

He's right, though, the stuff cools your skin right the motherfuck down and takes away some of the hurt. Another genuine miracle, and it was right in your ablution block all this time. You don't know how he can be knowing all this motherfucking miraculous shit all the time and not see the beauty in it. Maybe if he could see all these miracles he wouldn't feel like he had to wear his frown all the time.

You find yourself wandering outside with him afterwards, and you can't quite stop yourself from glancing to the horizon, looking for a telltale hint of white, but it's still not there. You've spent so long looking for it that it feels like it's a thing that's missing, like there's a gaping hole in the world where that motherfucker should be, but isn't.

Karkat sees where you're looking, though. He grabs your hand, and then up and sits down right in the middle of your beach, pulling you down with him. "If you're going to insist on waiting around for that asshole, at least do it with me," he grumbles. " _Someone's_ got to keep you from accidentally committing suicide over stupid shit."

You can't help but notice he's cleaned up all the stuff you had to go and leave on the beach when you scrambled back into your hive. Well, he does care. Does he care like you do? You know with him it'll all have to be some motherfuckin particular way, follow some kind of arbitrary-ass rules from one of his silly movies. Those things don't show the true beauty of no miracle love by a long shot; they've got all the depth of the grins you paint on your face each evening, which you're not even wearing now, on account of whatever remnants of your paint actually survived yesterday were cleaned right off in your hive just now. That's not the point though. Or maybe it's _exactly_ the point. Karkat doesn't like the real miracles, because he's afraid of finding something he can't understand, something he can't get his certainty on about. Thinks if he can tiptoe round in shallow puddles, he can get wet without worrying about drowning. How can you possibly show him what it's like to really _swim_?

Fuckin romance. How does it work?

Now that he's here with you, though, the night is full of miracles again (or maybe they were always there, and now they're just easier to see), and they're all up and crowding out that hole where a certain white dot ain't. Maybe you can show him a few.

"Look at all those bitchtits stars, bro," you say. "Can't you see them dancing?"


End file.
